Robert
Garnier
born c. 1545, La Ferté Bernard,
France
died September 20, 1590, Le Mans
outstanding French tragic dramatist of
his time.
While a law student at Toulouse,
Garnier won two prizes in the jeux
floraux, or floral games (an annual
poetry contest held by the Académié des
Jeux Floraux). He published his first
collection of lyrical pieces (now lost),
Plaintes Amoureuses de Robert Garnier,
in 1565. After practice at the Parisian
bar he became conseiller du roi in his
native district and later lieutenant-général
criminel.
Garnier’s early plays—Porcie (1568),
Hippolyte (1573), and Cornélie (1574)—
are in the style of the Senecan school.
His next group of tragedies—Marc-Antoine
(1578), La Troade (1579), and Antigone
(1580)—show an advance in technique
beyond the plays of Étienne Jodelle,
Jacques Grévin, and his own early work,
since the rhetoric is accompanied by
some action.
In 1582 and 1583 he produced his two
masterpieces, Bradamante and Les Juifves.
In Bradamante, the first important
French tragicomedy, which alone of his
plays has no chorus, he turned from
Senecan models and sought his subject in
Ludovico Ariosto. The romantic story
becomes an effective drama in Garnier’s
hands. Although the lovers, Bradamante
and Roger, never meet on the stage, the
conflict in the mind of Roger supplies a
genuine dramatic interest. Les Juifves,
Garnier’s second great work, is the
story of the barbarous vengeance of
Nebuchadnezzar on King Zedekiah and his
children. This tragedy, almost entirely
elegiac in conception, is unified by the
personality of the prophet.
Garnier was a Roman Catholic and a
patriot: he used his tragedies to convey
moral and religious arguments to his
contemporaries, who were then suffering
in the Wars of Religion. His fine verse
reflects the influence of his friend
Pierre de Ronsard. His plays, which
contain many affecting emotional scenes,
were performed to the end of the 16th
century.
